Iapetus

Iapetus

The Cassini spacecraft took this image of Iapetus on 27 March from a distance of about a million km (621,000 miles). This is the second-closet approach to the moon in this mission phase. The closest was in 2011.

The image was taken with the narrow angle camera and gives a good view of the bright terrain in the north polar region.

Iapetus is 1,471 km / 914 miles in diameter. Iapetus is two-toned so the color shading isn’t shadow. The color is pretty close to natural color thanks to RGB filters, the image was brightened to bring out the darker features.

NASA’s description of the features:The large basin at lower right, within the dark terrain, is named Turgis. The slightly smaller crater at the nine o’clock position is Falsaron. The two prominent craters just above image center are Roland and Turpin. At the limb around the three o’clock position is the darkened rim of the crater Naimon.

The image was produced by Tilmann Denk at Freie Universität in Berlin. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute